One of the biggest reasons why Facebook has remained such a dominant competitor in the social media circuit is because it’s been committed to reinventing and changing itself, presumably for the benefit of its users. Facebook wants to provide the best content—and the best overall experience—to its users, to keep them around and satisfied for as long as possible. This past week, Facebook announced a new update—one that might have a positive effect on its user base, but has publishers intimidated at the possibilities. Put simply, it’s designed to send less traffic to content-based websites.

How is this going to affect content publishers? Marketers? Users? Let’s see if we can answer these questions.

The Basics of the Update

Facebook announced the latest change on its blog last week, remaining somewhat ambiguous about the exact changes that would be rolled out. Starting now, Facebook is going to increasingly prioritize posts in newsfeeds that come from users’ friends and family members—in other words, posts made by other individual users on the platform. By contrast, the visibility of posts made by brands and organizations, especially content publishers, is going to decrease.

The motivation for this update hearkens back to Facebook’s original goals and intentions. Facebook never set out to be a provider or distributor of content; instead, it was meant to connect people to each other. This update is a way to get back to its roots, and provide more content from friends and family, while decreasing content reach from brands and commercial entities. But what will this update do to the ecosystem of content visibility that so many publishers and marketers have come to rely on?

Organic Reach

Organic reach on Facebook, the potential visibility of posts made by a business or organization account without any paid boosts, has been declining steadily for years now. Savvy marketers figured they understood the motivation behind this decline implicitly; obviously, Facebook was trying to drive more marketers to pay for advertising on the platform. While this might have been the case, Facebook’s more recent move to boost more friend- and family-originated content spells a more user-centric motivation.

In any case, it’s clear that organic reach is going to decline further for marketers on Facebook. This is going to disrupt a number of content distribution campaigns, and makes the value of syndicating on Facebook much lower – unless you want to pay for that syndication.

Ad Prices

As a result of the decline in organic reach, it’s likely that more publishers are going to flock to paid advertising on Facebook to make up the difference. After all, it’s relatively inexpensive—at least for now. With more brands swarming to paid advertising to make up the losses on the organic side, it’s likely that Facebook will be forced to raise prices, or even adopt a more aggressive kind of bidding platform, similar to what we see in Google AdWords. This will make advertising less accessible to small business owners, and more of an expense for content publishers if they want to remain visible on the world’s biggest social media platform. This problem could be complicated even further if Facebook decides to restrict ad space in an even more concentrated effort to improve user experience.

Instant Articles

When Facebook announced Instant Articles last year, publishers took it as a sign that the platform was going to do more to allow publishers to connect with audiences. Now, it looks as though the platform has taken a step backward. Instant Articles load automatically and can be accessed without leaving the app, and they’re still available for select publishers—but this new update may actually decrease the visibility of this type of content. That means publishers who have invested heavily in this strategy, thinking it as the wave of the future, may be sorely disappointed.

Publisher Advertising

Facebook now sends more traffic to media sites than Google. Think about that for a second. Thanks to visibility and user interaction on Facebook, media sites have seen major increases in their inbound traffic, and proportionally, they’ve been able to ask for higher prices and sell more advertising on their main sites. A major hit in the Facebook newsfeed is akin to a Google penalty that drops them in the search rankings and sharply decreases the number of visitors coming in. A significant decline in traffic would mean a significant drop in ad revenue, which has publishers worried about the long-term consequences.

The Viral Gap

The value of content isn’t quite evenly distributed, like a bell curve. Instead, the vast majority of content is practically worthless, never earning any shares or links. Only truly outstanding pieces generate much attention—and when they do, they generate thousands of shares and links. These breakthrough pieces of content will be just as visible as they always have, due to their popularity (I assume), but the lesser pieces will decline in visibility. As a result, the quality gap when it comes to content will stretch even further—and more pressure will be on publishers and marketers to create truly outstanding work.

What to Do Now?

If you’re in the publishing or marketing industry, you may be wondering how to adjust your content strategy for this latest development. The truth is, I don’t have a straightforward answer for you. It’s hard to say exactly how significant this update is, or how quickly these potential effects may manifest. But if I were you, I’d start hedging my bets; start looking elsewhere for content distribution opportunities, but don’t bail out of Facebook entirely. The newsfeed may be changing, but all that means is that you have to change with it. Below are a few resources I’ve gathered that may be of help if you’re looking for ways to augment or fix your Facebook marketing strategy:

Founder & CEO of AudienceBloom, a Seattle-based content marketing firm, as well as EmailAnalytics, an email productivity app, and Kwippy, an iOS/Android app in which users receive themed photo challenges randomly throughout the day. I'm on a mission to demystify and simp...